Posts tagged with “philosophy”

Life Achievements

So today I was thinking about a video that I’m making for the father-in-law of a friend of mine. He’s being honored with a lifetime achievement award, which got me thinking: what exactly quantifies a person’s achievements in life? What would make me happy to walk away from life having accomplished?

What I came up with was kind of a multi-part response. I think first off, everything you’ve done in life can be divided into four classifications:

1. Class 1: Unimportant - Something that you’ve done that is inconsequential to the betterment of the human race. An achievement that doesn’t affect others.
2. Class 2: Noteworthy - An action, role, or status that you’ve invested yourself towards, though has no lasting effect on the other people involved. i.e.: Your position could be filled by a replacement with little difficulty.
3. Class 3: Important - Once-in-a-lifetime opportunities and roles that define you as a person. Your position could not easily be filled by a replacement and you have permanently left your mark on the role.
4. Class 4: Critical - Something that others dependent on. Your position could not be replaced, the well-being of others rests solely in your hands. Your absence would be deeply unsettling for others.

Class 1 items on my scale are the small things: you helped someone out in math class, you made honor roll, you learned to ride a bike. Stuff that nobody else really cares about but means a lot to you. It might be important to you, but it doesn’t define you in any larger sense. These achievements are sought by the vain and the petty.

Class 2 achievements are more substantial. Perhaps you had a job where you pushed papers. Surely your role helped to improve the quality of life for others—you’ve helped to better the company as a whole. You haven’t really done anything ground-breaking in a class 2 achievement, though.

I would imagine that a lot of people consider class 2 achievements to be “a big deal,” and they would be partially right: to go through life without experiencing the “small stuff” effectively results in one missing a lot of what life has to offer. Perhaps it’s something as simple as getting a promotion, placing well in a sports event, or helping a friend through some hard times. You’re doing something at least a little worthwhile and that’s something to be proud of.

On the flip side, these aren’t important enough to land you in any history books. In fact, chances are, they aren’t even likely to land you in any written records whatsoever. Think of these things as the tiny, metaphorical finish-line tapes that you run through. They don’t mean much in the end, but they’re not much more than symbolism.

Class 3 achievements are rare—the average person only achieves a handful of these throughout their life, if any. These are the big ones: working your way to the top of your company or organization, becoming a leader in your community or region, making a significant contribution to a worthy cause. These are the things that define a person’s character in the biggest ways. Your name might not be a household word, but you won’t be forgotten easily.

The last class of achievements is class 4. A class 4 achievement might just be the easiest (or most difficult) to attain: start a family. What’s more sacred than your genealogy? To start a lineage, to have dependents and raise them right is fundamental to our nature as humans. On the flip-side, though, if you raise your children badly, then it isn’t much of an achievement, is it? Anybody can pop out a kid, but it takes a dedicated and sensible person to teach them how to function in today’s world.

In the interest of being brief, I’ll close up with this: as it stands, I feel like I’ve got plenty of class 1 and 2 achievements, and who doesn’t? Anybody that’s done something with their life (up to the age of 20) should have a few under their belt. I don’t know if I’ve done anything 3 or 4-worthy. A lot of that is stuff that comes later in life, I would think. Obviously having a child is something that anyone that’s gone through puberty can do, but doing it responsibly is another story. I’ll just have to wait and see how the rest of my life turns out to know for sure, I suppose.

Conversations

I’ve always had the philosophy that if something goes unsaid, it will eventually make itself apparent in one way or another. For instance, if two of your friends have a discreet conversation (which you don’t overhear), you will eventually find out what was said in one way or another.

This mentality has always worked in my favor. I’ve found that if I sit back and don’t express distinct curiosity in something that I was not meant to take part in, one of a few things happens:

1. The conversation was actually a secret for the purpose of me finding out. The person telling the secret wanted someone else (namely myself) to pry. My lack of doing so instills disappointment and the truth is revealed.
2. The actions (or consequences of the actions) of the individuals involved become visible, and I’m able to piece the conversation together.
3. Down the road, someone tells me what the conversation was about.

I read somewhere that your mind tends to find patterns in things that have no pattern at all: for instance, you might find that your history class runs extra late on Tuesdays, but there’s only a “pattern” because you’re hungry and you notice what time it is. For all you know, you could be running extra late on all of your classes, but unless there is something to distinguish it in your mind, you’ll never pick up on it.

That’s how I think this is kind of working out for me. I let a lot of things go. I try not to pry. But I think a lot of things slip by me and I never say, “Hmmmm…I never found out what such and such a conversation was about,” for the simple reason that I don’t ever remember the conversation to jump-start that process.

On the other hand, when I am able to figure out what something was about (through whatever means), I mentally make a note of it, thus perpetuating my belief that this system actually works.

So now I raise the question: does it work? I mean, I think it works. It feels like it works. It helps prevent drama. It feels like I’m more “behaved,” if you will. So overall, even if it is a complete illusion, it works. It makes me happy, and that’s all that matters.

Quick Takes

Monday morning shots at coherence:

• On the train this morning, there was a guy standing at the other end that looked EXACTLY LIKE ME. Same style of clothes, same hairline/hair color/eye color/skin tone, same facial features, same height…this guy was my spitting image. And no, before you even suggest it, it wasn’t a mirror. I was totally creeping on him the entire time. I felt like Stewie meeting his future self (because it was on public transportation and everything).
• Then I thought about what I would actually do if I was standing across from my future self. What if that guy really was a future me? Well if I were him, the last thing that I would want is to have the younger me walk up to the older me and be an ass. So I just kind of played it cool and went about my own business.
• I’m drinking some chai tea right now. It’s spicy and seductive.
• Internet Explorer sucks.
• I leave in less than a week. That makes me sad. I would have liked to stay quite a bit longer, but my future does not allow for it.
• I had a dream the other night about being outside of an observatory. Then I forgot the rest. Then I remembered it. Then I forgot it again. It was something dumb, too, like I was walking through Broadway or something. It was bizarre and didn’t make a whole lot of sense in the dream, either.
• Quite a while ago, I made fake cheesecake. Basically sweetened condensed milk, Cool Whip, and cream cheese. Now I have leftover ingredients. Hmmmm…do I make more? Or do I trash them? I think I’m going to (regretfully) throw the stuff out.
• And by throw it out, I mean recycle it.
• My dad sent me a picture of Barack Obama’s supposed Kenyan birth certificate. It’s convincing, but I don’t buy it. Birthers: please go learn to be productive. Even if Obama wasn’t born in the US, the last thing this country needs is political upheaval. I realize that you want Palin/Bush/McCain, but Bush can’t be president again, Palin is hopeless after her resignation, and McCain also (if I remember correctly) has birth certificate issues (born in Panama?).
• I’ve got my Monday Thinking Pants on. Pants for thinking on Mondays. Can’t think without them. On Mondays.
• Somebody cleans my desk every now and then…I want to thank them, but I’d be a little ashamed because my desk gets [kind of] messy. So I think I’ll just pretend it’s exactly how I left it and act surprised if someone calls me out.

Lemmings

Today, nobody expected the MUNI Inquisition. Police officers raided the N line at Noe and Duboce and made everyone on board show proof of payment. This is the first time it’s ever happened to me, and it was actually kind of terrifying. Fortunately, however, there were four people that didn’t have passes and were forced to leave the train (to get citations), and so it was a little less crowded. Their stupidity/forgetfullness is my source of humor.

“People are such lemmings”

Anyhow, this went on all day, from what I understand, or at least well through evening rush hour. As such, the entire N line was backed up to kingdom come. At 6:20 PM, a train finally pulled in (35 minutes late, no less), and it was PACKED. Packed like no other. The basic logic is that if no trains come for a while, lines start to form. My station (Montgomery) is second on the underground loop, and so when a (mostly) empty train pulls into the first station (Embarcadaro), everybody and their brother gets on, leaving no room for Montgomery Station folk.

Me being the academic that I am, did some estimations based on the realtime subway map and figured that another train would follow the full one. As more people than I’ve ever seen in one single space crammed into the cabs of the N-Judah train, I prayed that I was going to be right.

The train pulled away and sure enough, a nearly-empty two car N train pulls up. There were quite a few seats still open, even. I started laughing out loud at the silliness of the folks that just pulled away, packed into a borderline-unsanitary confined space.

As I laughed, the woman standing next to me chimed in, “People are such lemmings, aren’t they?”

What words of wisdom. I look at most folks and think, “Damn, why such a rush?” I stop for the “don’t walk” signals. I let drivers make their turns before I cross the street. If you never have an excuse to slow down and stop to see what’s around you, then why bother doing whatever you’re doing? The journey is part of the experience!

But at the same time, I can only think back to this XKCD cartoon…